


Word from the Wise

by benicemurphy



Category: Free!
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Humor, M/M, Sickfic, Wisdom Teeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2019-10-17
Packaged: 2020-12-21 08:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21071672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/benicemurphy/pseuds/benicemurphy
Summary: Haru gets his wisdom teeth removed and feels many feelings in the aftermath. The Iwatobi boys are there to witness it.





	Word from the Wise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [svana_vrika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/svana_vrika/gifts).

> Happy birthday to my sweet, sweet friend!! I love you so much and am grateful every day that we met through this beautiful ship. <3 I hope your day is wonderful and that you enjoy this bit of silliness that I wrote for you! <3

“Wisdom teeth,” Haru decides, is a very misleading name. Why would more teeth grant a person more wisdom? Rin has more teeth (or at least, the pointiest teeth) than anyone he has ever seen, and his wisdom remains dangerously low.

In the back of his mind, he can almost hear Rin’s indignant “Oi!”

Also, why would anyone _remove_ their wisdom teeth? If teeth grant wisdom, wouldn’t a person do everything in one’s power to keep them?

Why do teeth even grow in spaces where they don’t fit? Why has the human mouth not evolved to accommodate all of the teeth that try to grow there?

Distantly, he hears someone laughing. He doesn’t think it’s himself — he doesn’t usually laugh unless under duress — but who else could it be?

“Under duress,” someone snickers.

“Shhhh!” someone else hisses. “Don’t distract him!”

“Distract him from _what_?”

“From his thoughts! Just let him ride the waves.”

“...That’s a very appropriate metaphor for Haruka-senpai.”

“Guys, maybe we should let him rest. I’m sure he wouldn’t appreciate us listening.”

Haru floats through the conversation coming from the four voices in his head. He likes the last one the best. The last one seems nice, and sweet. And his voice sounds like honey.

“_Ooooooh! Mako-chan!_”

“That’s— That’s not what he means!”

“I think that _is_ what he means, Makoto,” someone else snickers.

_Makoto_. Haru feels himself smile. Or at least, he thinks it’s a smile. It definitely doesn’t feel normal. Have those muscles always been there? Someone once told him it takes more muscles to frown than to smile, but smiling takes so much _effort_. Still, the honey voice chatters in the background of his mind, and it makes him feel warm.

Mmm. Warm. The voice is warm. He wonders if the person is warm, too. It might be nice, he thinks, if the person who owns the voice would lie in bed with him and keep him warm. His blankets are warm, but they aren’t soft like his heart when he hears the voice — _Makoto_.

“Oh, shit,” someone says around a laugh. “Look how red Makoto’s face is.”

“Mako-chan, you _dog_!”

The only response is a squeak. It’s a funny sound. It replays in Haru’s head, over and over again until he’s so tickled by the noise (duress!) that laughter bubbles up his esophagus and out of his mouth.

“Wow, how beautiful!”

“Eugh. Please.”

“Rei-chan is right. The sound of Haru-chan’s laughter will feature in my dreams tonight.”

“Me too, in my nightmares.”

Haru frowns. _That feels better_.

He wants to swim. He makes to get up, but something holds him down — no, some_one_?

Haru looks around to discover the identity of his captor, be it person or thing, and comes face to face with a literal angel. He forgets for a moment that he was on the verge of tears. There are only two things he wants in this world: to swim, and to see the angel without a shirt.

“_Haru!_”

“Wha?” he hears himself say, then frowns again. Have words always been this _hard_?

“You can’t— you can’t just say things like that!”

The angel’s face has gone red, and it’s cute. His fuzzy mind makes the connection that the face and the honey voice and probably the abs belong to the same person.

“Oh, he definitely has abs,” someone irrelevant says. Haru wonders why anyone else is even here when clearly the angelic honey-voiced angel with nice abs is all he needs.

“Oi, Haru. You’re gonna make Makoto cry.”

“What? But crying is your job, Rin-chan.”

“Why you—”

“Statistically speaking, Nagisa is correct, of course. Rin-san does cry more frequently than anyone else in the group—”

“THAT’S IT. I’ve had enough. Good luck with Fish Boy, Makoto.”

“Saba,” Haru mutters.

There’s a pause before anyone responds. It irritates him.

“What’s that, Haruka-senpai?”

“SAAABAAA.”

“Haru, no. No saba right now. The doctor said only liquids until your mouth heals.”

This time, the tears do come. “I wan’ saba. Don’ lemme swim, don’ lemme eat saba. Just gonna die.”

“Haru-chan! Don’t die! You can’t die! We’ll get you some saba! Quick, Mako-chan, go make some— wait, no— Rei-chan, you go! We can’t burn his house down!”

“Hey! I wouldn’t—”

“Yes! I’m going!”

“No! Rei, you know he can’t have solid food yet! Nagisa! Calm down! Stop frazzling Rei!”

Haru sobs.

“Oh, Haru-chan, it’s okay. It’s not forever,” the honey voice says.

“Sounds like honey,” he mumbles.

“Okay, Haru-chan.”

“Don’t like honey. Too sweet.”

“I know.”

“Sounds pretty, though. Feel warm in my heart.” His eyes begins to flutter shut again, and it irritates him that he can’t keep them open.

“Hey, guys? I think you can go. Haru needs his rest.”

There’s not as much back-and-forth between the voices in his brain now. He thinks he’s still crying, but he doesn’t know why. What had he been crying about, anyway? His eyes sting. Crying is stupid. There’s not point to it. Crying probably uses more muscles than frowning and smiling combined.

“We’ll see you tomorrow, Makoto-senpai. Haruka-senpai, always a pleasure. Please feel better soon.”

Haru grunts.

“Bye Mako-chan! Bye Haru-chan!”

He grunts again. The angel says goodbye to the two weird ones, and then everything is quiet.

Haru allows himself to breathe for a moment as he floats. What was it one of the weird ones said before? Ride the wave. Yeah. He’s floating in water. Nice water. Water is always good to him. Water always understands.

“You’ll be back in the water before you know it, Haru-chan,” the voice gently says.

Without so many other voices around, he’s able to understand what’s going on a little more clearly. It seems as if the voice isn’t inside his head at all; it’s standing next to him, and it is definitely attached to the body with the nice abs. “Mm,” he hums in either acknowledgement of the words or appreciation of the view. He’s not sure which, but it doesn’t matter.

A name comes to him. He thinks he heard it earlier, but everything is scrambled up and fuzzy, and he’s not sure what’s real and what isn’t. He tests the name on his tongue. “Makoto?” It feels nice. It feels familiar, like he’s already said it a million times and will probably say it a million more. A beautiful face with a smile like sunshine and eyes like a warm hug springs into his mind.

He forces his eyes open when he hears an answering, “Hm?” to find the same face looking at him now. His nose feels tingly with the pleasure the site brings, and he smiles softly.

“Rest, Haru,” Makoto says. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

Makoto makes to move away from Haru’s bedside, but Haru acts on reflex as he reaches out for him. He catches the bottom of Makoto’s shirt — it’s soft between his fingers, and he wants it to stay close.

“Haru?”

“Stay,” Haru mumbles. His eyes are falling shut again.

“I’ll be here, Haru. I’m not going anywhere.”

Haru tries to shake his head but grimaces but the motion makes the new holes in his mouth throb. “Stay,” he says again. His mouth hurts. He knows he’s frowning, he can feel it in the way his eyebrows are still scrunched together, and maybe that’s what makes Makoto give in.

“Alright. I’m here,” he says. “What do you need?”

The bed probably isn’t big enough for both of them, but Haru doesn’t care. He’s still holding onto the soft shirt, and he thinks it would be a nice pillow for his tender face, which feels many sizes too big.

He yanks with as much strength as he can muster (which isn’t much at all, but the message apparently gets through all the same), and Makoto helps rearrange him so that they can both lie side by side on the bed.

Haru can’t very well pillow the sore side of his mouth on Makoto’s shirt, but Makoto (genius, perfect, Heaven-sent Makoto) is already positioned on his other side — the side that is still the correct size — and Haru is able to rest his good cheek on him.

Immediately, his heightened emotions feel calmed. He’s on the verge of dozing off again any minute. While he’s still conscious, he drapes one arm over the body beside him and takes the soft shirt in hand.

He falls asleep to the soothing sensation of rubbing the fabric between his fingers.

___________________

Haru wakes up confused. The last thing he remembers is the doctor counting down before his procedure; he has absolutely no recollection of the hours between then and now.

He comes into consciousness slowly. The first sensation he recognizes is something soft gripped in his hand. He pulls at it experimentally, eyes still closed, and elicits a quiet sound from somewhere above him.

The next sensation he registers is the familiar scent of Makoto’s laundry detergent. He’s been using the same detergent for as long as Haru’s known him, so the smell is one he’s come to equate with home. It is not, however, a smell he often associates with his bed, which is where he’s figured out he somehow ended up.

“Makoto?” he calls. His throat feels scratchy and dry, and the act of speaking makes one half of his face throb. In fact, the more awake he becomes, the more he registers the constant dull ache where his wisdom teeth once were.

“I’m here,” Makoto answers. His voice his gravelly with disuse, just like it always is when he first wakes up. It’s been many, many years since the two of them last shared a bed, but it still feels familiar, even with their much bigger bodies and much smaller bed space. Makoto’s voice rumbles through his chest where Haru still rests his head. It’s intimate in a way with which Haru shouldn’t be comfortable, but he is.

He’s still groggy from the anesthesia, but he’s aware that something must have happened for him to be hugging his best friend like a teddy bear in his own bed. He only hopes he didn’t do or say anything too embarrassing during that time — not that he’s particularly worried about being embarrassed, but he does dread the amount of teasing he might receive from anyone who may have overheard. The teasing can be tiresome.

Slowly, Haru forces himself to wake and sit up. His mouth tastes like iron, and belatedly he realizes that there’s something cottony in his mouth. It makes him grimace to imagine what state his gums must be in.

“How are you feeling?” Makoto asks. The gravelly quality has dissipated, and he sounds like his normal self again.

“Mouth hurts,” he answers truthfully. He wants to ask a million questions: What happened? When did I get home? _How_ did I get home? How much time has passed? Why are you in my bed?

Instead he lays his head back down on Makoto’s chest and idly notices how nice the fabric feels against his cheek.

“This shirt is soft,” he says.

Makoto chuckles. “I know.”

He hears some rustling behind him before he feels Makoto’s arm, which he must have been lying on the whole time, come up to rest against his back. It feels so nice, cuddled like this. Haru never would have thought himself a cuddler, but now, with his head pillowed nicely against Makoto’s soft, familiar-smelling chest, and Makoto’s hand rubbing a soothing pattern on his back, he can’t think of any place he’d rather be.

“We need to change your bandages,” Makoto murmurs against the crown of his head. When did he get so close? Haru doesn’t mind the closeness. His heart responds to it with a stuttered rhythm.

“Mm.”

“Come on, Haru. You need another dose of pain medication, too. Let’s get up and get you taken care of first, then we can come back and lie down some more.”

Haru feels his hand involuntarily clench in Makoto’s shirt before he can stop himself. He feels ridiculous for being so clingy, but his mouth hurts, and his head feels funny, and this warmth and closeness with his most treasured person makes him feel nurtured. “You’ll stay?” he asks, feeling shy but hopeful. “With me? Here?”

Makoto’s other hand comes up and brushes the hair away from Haru’s eyes. Haru feels him shift again, and then he can feel Makoto rest his head against his own.

“Of course,” Makoto says. His lips rustle Haru’s hair where he speaks against it. “I’ll always stay with you. As long as you want me to.”

Haru doesn’t even know what time it is, but he knows he’d ask Makoto to stay forever if it were reasonable to do so. Instead, he compromises and says, “Stay the night.”

Makoto nods and gives him a small squeeze. “Whatever you say, Haru-chan.”

Later, after his mouth has been cleaned and repacked, after he drifts off into a deep, painkiller-induced sleep, he’ll awaken to find himself intimately wrapped up under his bed sheets with his best friend, and he’ll remember it as the best night’s sleep he’s ever gotten.


End file.
